The Unlikely Man Who Popularized The Stories Of King Arthur—Geoffrey of Monmouth

(Painting of King Arthur by N.C. Wyeth (1882–1945), from Sir Thomas Mallory, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons

In 12th-century Britain, a peculiar churchman, historian and teacher named Geoffrey of Monmouth launched the mystical tale of King Arthur and the magician Merlin on its path to world acclaim with the debut of his book, The History of the Kings of Britain. Though the adventures of King Arthur and his chivalrous knights were eventually accepted and admired in Britain, the road to acceptance was rough. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s writing was initially widely criticized in the British scholarly world, but it found quick admirers in medieval French literature and poetry. Later, the tales of King Arthur sluggishly crept back to Britain, only becoming truly mainstream after the 16th century with the help of literary masters such as Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Tennyson.

Saint Augustine (c. 354-430)

A Wayward Son Who Became One Of Christianity’s Most Influential Figures

  (Saint Augustine, painted by Antonio Rodríguez (1636 - 1691), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)

Augustine was born in 354 CE to a Roman family living in Algiers. His mother was a Christian, and it is thought that his father converted to the religion on his deathbed. Suffice it to say, Augustine was exposed to Christianity from a young age. As a child, Augustine was made a catechumen—a person learning about Christianity before baptism—but he decided not to go through with it, and sought spiritual enlightenment elsewhere.

Homer: The Obscure Legend And His Epic Tales

  (Statue of Homer, photographed by Rufus46, via Creative Commons (licensed CC 3.0), cropped and edited)

All around the world, and in almost every country, countless educated people have heard of, or read, the famous works by the ancient Greek poet, Homer. His two masterpieces, The Iliad and The Odyssey, are widely considered to be the first two works of ‘Western’ literature. In addition to that, Homer (along with his possible contemporary, Hesiod) was one of the first Greeks to drag the gods of Olympus down from their obscure mountain and make the deities relatable and personified with emotions in ways that the average person could understand. The poet’s works would go on to be preserved, edited and translated into numerous languages, serving as a core component of literary education—and it is still taught in schools, today. Yet, except those general truths, much about Homer remains a mystery. Who was he? When did he live? Was Homer one man or many? To these questions, historians can only shrug their shoulders and hypothesize.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400 CE), The Masterful 14th Century English Poet

(Sketch of Geoffrey Chaucer from The Illustrated Magazine of Art. 1-1 (ca. 1853), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in 1342 to a family with some ties to government bureaucracy (court and minting), but Chaucer’s father mainly made a living by producing wine. When Geoffrey Chaucer was around fifteen years of age, he managed to gain a position as page to the Countess of Ulster. In that position he acted as a servant and a messenger for his noble employer. Two years later, in 1359, Chaucer was sent to fight in the long-running Hundred Years War between England and France. French soldiers, however, captured the seventeen-year-old youth. Thankfully for Chaucer, he was not imprisoned for very long. The Countess of Ulster’s father-in-law, King Edward III of England, must have seen something he liked in young Geoffrey Chaucer, for he paid the boy’s ransom and negotiated his release in 1360.

Virgil (70-19 BCE)

(Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus, Octavia, and Livia, by Jean-Baptiste Wicar (1762–1834), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)

The poet Publius Vergilius Maro, better known as Virgil, was born in the rural village of Andes, near the modern day region of Mantua, Italy. He grew up during a tremendous time of tumultuous change. In the 1^st Century BCE, the power of the Roman Senate was challenged by many powerful authoritarian figures. The dictator, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, had only been dead for nine years when Virgil was born, and Julius Caesar was leading Roman legions into modern Switzerland, France, Belgium and England during Virgil’s teenage years.